Acquisition mania!: news of the job board industry

It’s that time again – time to round up what’s happening in the job board and online recruiting industry. No summer doldrums here, though – things continue to move apace. So let’s get started:

• JobAndTalent lands massive investment: Atomico has just led a $42 million Series B funding round for Jobandtalent. Currently the service is available in five cities: Madrid, Barcelona, Mexico City, Bogota and London. The mobile-focused company was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in Madrid. Impressive, and I imagine they’re on the way to North America.
• SmartRecruiters raises $30M: The cloud-based light ATS SmartRecruiters has raised $30M (this is addition to $25M previously raised). CEO Jerome Ternynck calls the service a “Salesforce for recruiting.” SmartRecruiters has garnered 700 enterprise customers in the past 24 months. They intend to use the funding to accelerate their growth. Impressive.
• Randstad buys Twago: twago,  a European freelance marketplace, has been acquired by Randstad. The purchase provide Randstad access to twago’s 500,000 freelancers. Interesting development.
• Recruitology acquires Cross-Post: Recruitology (formerly After College) has acquired Cross-Post, which was founded in 2004 by two former job board and executive search professionals. AfterCollege has grown to over 5,000,000 annual visitors since 1999. It represents students at over 18,000 academic departments and groups from 2,300 universities, with more than 400,000 jobs and internships from 25,000 employers.
• Crowded lands some moolah:  Crowded.com, a network for verified candidates in the hourly and on-demand workforce, has announced that it successfully closed a $3.3 Million seed funding round led by Tokalon Ventures, an early- and mid-stage boutique venture capital firm. The mobile-first service includes assessments and training as well as the usual access to hourly and on-demand employers.
• Snagajob buys PeopleMatter: Snagajob  is acquiring Charleston based PeopleMatter in a reverse triangular merger. The two organizations plan to create a human capital management platform for the hourly market, addressing each aspect of the talent lifecycle. The system will also include screening. Crowded, meet Snagajob!
• HourlyNerd lands funding: HourlyNerd, a Boston-based startup, wants to provide customers with programming and other skilled staff for a short-term need without having to recruit and hire the talent themselves. The company announced a $22 million Series C round today led by General Catalyst Partners (this is on top of $12M in previous funding). The company, which currently has 65 employees, claims around 10 percent of the Fortune 500 as customers. Sound familiar? HourlyNerd, meet Crowded and Snagajob and…..
• Monster seeks to compete with Glassdoor: Monster has announced the availability of an expanded set of employer brand and transparency capabilities, in conjunction with the U.S. launch of kununu, a European platform. kununu, now in a U.S. beta, on June 16, 2016 and features reviews from nearly 200,000 U.S. users, offering prospective employees an inside look at companies, from company culture, career development trajectories, work-life balance, office snacks and beyond with no required registration. Indeed and Glassdoor, meet Monster!
• CornerJob gets funding: CornerJob closed its $10 million Series A in February, and now the Barcelona-based jobs marketplace, one of several which focuses on low-skill, high-turnover recruitment via a smartphone messaging app, is now announcing a $25 million Series B funding round — that’s $35M in less than a year. Apparently a lot of the money is going into ads – spend any time watching Spanish TV right now and it won’t be long before you see an ad for CornerJob — with the startup touting its promise to users that they’ll at least find out within 24 hours if they got the job or not. This market is getting kind of crowded….
• Seek does stuff: Seek, the Australia-based jobs platform, paid AUD$104 million ($78.8 million U.S.) for full ownership of Brazil’s Brasil Online, operator of the country’s leading jobs marketplace Catho. In its H1 of FY2016 results, Seek reported revenue growth of 22 percent with total revenue at AUD$482 million. In other news, Seek invested more than $754,000 U.S. in Sidekicker. They seem diligent in pursuing their expansion strategy!
• Indeed goes offline: Well, kind of – their new mobile app, Job Spotter uses crowdsourcing to help small businesses reach online job seekers. How? App users snap pictures of local “help wanted” signs and upload them directly to Indeed. Job Spotter rewards users who submit photos by giving them points they can use to get gift cards. Plus, there’s no limit on the number of local job ads they can submit. A very interesting move by the recruiting giant.

Ok, kids, that’s it for now. More next time!

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